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Spotting true Earth-sized planets is challenging with current technology. by Dr. Nitish Priyadarshi Twinkle, twinkle little star, goes the nursery rhyme, but what scientists are really wanting to find is planet’s similar to our earth. When scientists confirmed in October that they had detected the first rocky planet outside our solar system, it advanced the longtime quest to find an Earth-like planet hospitable to life. Rocky planets -- Earth, Mercury, Venus and Mars -- make up half the planets in our solar system. Rocky planets are considered better environments to support life than planets that are mainly gaseous, like the other half of the planets in our system: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. We know that earth is a pretty rare planet in our universe. Only a relative handful of planets are rocky and even fewer are in the habitable zones of their stars. At the same time, there is still a lot that we don't know about our universe outside the solar system. The challenge in f...

Hickson Compact Group 31 is one of 100 compact galaxy groups catalogued by Canadian astronomer Paul Hickson. Credit: NASA, ESA, S. Gallagher (University of Western Ontario), and J. English (University of Manitoba). Photo No. STScI-PRC10-08a Imagine finding a living dinosaur in your backyard. Astronomers have found the astronomical equivalent of prehistoric life in our intergalactic back yard: a group of small, ancient galaxies that has waited 10 billion years to come together. These "late bloomers" are on their way to building a large elliptical galaxy. Such encounters between dwarf galaxies are normally seen billions of light-years away and therefore occurred billions of years ago. But these galaxies, members of Hickson Compact Group 31, are relatively nearby, only 166 million light-years away.New images of these galaxies by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope offer a window into what commonly happened in the universe's formative years when large galaxies were created from...

The Dark Side of Black Carbon by Dr. Nitish Priyadarshi Image Credit: NASA As interest in Earth's changing climate heats up, a tiny dark particle is stepping into the limelight: black carbon. Commonly known as soot, black carbon enters the air when fossil fuels and biofuels, such as coal, wood, and diesel are burned. Black carbon is found worldwide, but its presence and impact are particularly strong in Asia. Black carbon, a short-lived particle, is in perpetual motion across the globe. The Tibetan Plateau's high levels of black carbon likely impact the region's temperature, clouds and monsoon season. Black soot deposited on Tibetan glaciers has contributed significantly to the retreat of the world's largest non-polar ice masses, according to new research by scientists from NASA and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Soot absorbs incoming solar radiation and can speed glacial melting when deposited on snow in sufficient quantities. Temperatures on the Tibetan Plateau -- ...